Working with a static .json file located in App_Data?

In my ASP.NET MVC 4 project, I have a

.json

file in my

App_Data

folder containing geographical data that I want to load up into D3.js.

So far, my working approach has been to have jQuery perform an AJAX call to some Controller which returns a JsonResult - and on success, storing the JSON in some Javascript variable which gets loaded into D3. This time around, I'd like to skip the controller and request a static

.json

file directly from the App_Data folder instead.

I tried grabbing the .json's relative path using

var url = "@Url.Content("~/App_Data/example.json")";

, but the Javascript debugger excoriated me with lots of weird regex errors.

I also tried throwing the file into the Content folder to see if the directory name makes a difference.